“How is he doing that?” Sarah asked herself for the 100th time as she watched the feed from the University of Arizona in Tucson.
“Sarah, What do you have for me?” her Supervisor asked.
“The A.I. flagged someone floating around their dorm room at the University,” Sarah responded.
Jack Oglin, her supervisor, brought his tablet up to eye level, drew the information from Sarah’s terminal, and began reading.
“Name: Connor Nash”
“Occupation: Student at University of Arizona.”
“Major: None declared.”
“Test Scores: Unremarkable”
“IQ tests are on record, slightly above average.”
“Father: Deceased”
“Mother: Brenda Nash, Widowed and Retired.”
“Siblings: None”
“Children: None”
“Romantic Interest: None”
“Grandparents: All Deceased.”
Once he was done reading off the information, Jack turned to Sarah, “Some kind of prank or practice for a college prank?”
“No, and watch,” Sarah replied as Connor opened the window and vanished. Sarah turned up her speakers as they watched an empty room.
Eventually, Jack’s patience wore thin, and he asked, “What am I watching?”
“I believe he flew out the window,” she said as she pulled up another monitor from an external camera that showed the outside of the dorm. Connor’s window clearly opened, but nothing exited it. They sat there and watched until the window closed, and Connor reappeared in his room.
“How sure are you this isn’t a stunt?” Jack asked Sarah.
“I had the A.I. scrub the audio from the room for any ambient sounds after the window opened, and he disappeared. Just before he reappeared, the microphone picked up someone breathing. Otherwise, while he was gone for just over five minutes, no sounds were picked up except sounds that could be cross-analyzed with the camera outside. They all matched. The A.I. is 99% sure that no new sounds were created inside the room.
“How about the sensors at Davis-Monthan? Did they detect anything?”
Sarah pulled up another feed and cross-referenced the data with the time Connor was active. “Yes, there is something.” There’s a vertical displacement of air directly over the University that levels out at five thousand feet and then shoots off south. Five minutes later, it returns and descends back to the University. Radar and Infrared show nothing, so it didn’t flag the sensors as a threat. The change in air pressure and displacement was detected but flagged as an anomaly.”
Are you saying this kid has some form of stealth tech that we can’t detect except by air displacement after the fact?”
A beep drew Jack’s attention to the tablet in his hand.
Sarah received the same notification on her screen.
Subject: Connor Orion Nash Sample Analysis Results:
90% Connor Orion Nash DNA,
10% DNA of unknown origin.
Jack pushed a button on his Tablet. There was an audible click as every door into the analyst's room locked simultaneously.
“Jack turned to Sarah,” Secure your hard drive and follow me. Everyone else, keep working on whatever you're working on. Security will be by in a bit to make sure none of your terminals have been compromised, “Jack said to the other analysts who were still working,
Sarah hit a few buttons, shut down the system and then her monitor before she removed the Hard Drive and stood. She unplugged the computer from the wall to make sure any information in the RAM chips disappeared as well. Once she was satisfied that her terminal was secure, she stood and followed Jack into his office and out through a door in the back wall.
“Where to now?” Sarah asked.
“Now we brief my boss.
***
During the rest of Friday and Saturday, Connor didn’t leave his dorm room except to get something to eat. It was really weird. Everyone was looking at him funny. He could swear the girls all looked like they wanted to eat him, and the guys, well, except for a few, looked like they were either angry at or jealous of him. He wasn’t sure what it was all about, well, unless having a high Charisma score affected the women, of course, which meant that the guys that didn’t look at him angrily were…
Whatever. He couldn’t help how he looked, and while it might be interesting to chase the girls, he had a lot on his mind right now. So, he kept to himself and remained in his dorm room. He had a couple of assignments to finish, even if something weird might be going on. He finished all of the assignments he was supposed to do in record time while continuing to search the internet for any other strange occurrences at the time he was inducted into the SYSTEM. He didn’t find anything.
At 4. p.m., that changed when six simultaneous reports went live. Twenty-five miles above Mt. Kimball, Arizona, Morocco, Japan, China, Russia, and somewhere near Easter Island, Bright lights appeared above the world. Each was clearly visible from the ground. The images that had been recorded showed small pulsating lights that alternated in color as they grew bright enough to be visible in full daylight. Connor realized that the four points were equidistant around the globe while the point in Russia and near Easter Island seemed to be about the same distance offset from the North and South Pole as the lights above the other four points around the globe that were offset to the north of the equator.
As he was pulling up the information, Connor’s attention was drawn to a notification that filled his vision.
Uncanny Perception has Activated
SYSTEM Intrusion Detect…
SYSTEM Edit in Progress.
SYSTEM Induction Countdown set to 10
Just as suddenly as the lights appeared, they vanished. He considered trying to search for further information when the last notifications he received demanded his attention as they brought a new question to the forefront of his thoughts: Ten What?
Just then, every piece of electronics worldwide failed. He’d read enough end-of-the-world fiction to recognize an Electromagnetic Pulse, or a failure of all technology caused by a SYSTEM were the most likely culprits. He also knew that this was bad. If this were worldwide, things would get out of hand quickly. He also realized that being in the third story of a building as planes fell out of the sky was probably not a good thing. He needed to be in the open where he could see any threat that might appear.
Connor moved to his dresser and deposited the whole thing into his inventory. Then he went to the closet and did the same thing. Since nothing electronic seemed to be working, he also stored his mini fridge. There were a few cold drinks in there that might keep. He could also drop the fridge off somewhere later. The minute he spent taking things now would save him some heartache later.
Connor activated Flight and Stealth. It didn’t look like there was any restriction that caused him to appear when he interacted with his environment. He walked over, opened the window, and flew up into the sky. It was Saturday; Mom should be home, which was to the northeast of the University.
BOOM!
A colossal explosion billowed up off to his west. The explosion had come from the general direction of the Mall. His concentration faltered for a moment. Both Stealth and Flight failed. He’d dropped fifty feet before he was able to reactivate both skills. He doubted anyone was going to notice, though; everyone was running from the spreading fire, which was generating heat he could feel from half a mile away.
It was four in the afternoon on Saturday. Shit! Elizabeth was probably in the mall working. Before he could go down that rabbit hole, a new notification appeared.
Uncanny Perception has Activated.
Connor waited for a moment to see if there would be any more notifications. When none appeared, he looked around and saw…his mom floating in the air five feet in front of him. It wasn’t his mom, though. It was a transparent, dare he say it, ghostly copy of his mom. “Mom?”
“Connor! Connor, I can’t see you. I know you’re there, but I can’t see you.”
Connor deactivated Stealth, “I’m here, Mom.”
“You’re flying,” his mom pointed out.
Connor ignored the question, So are you? What happened?”
Before his mother could answer, Connor watched as she was yanked toward the mountain to the North. With a thought, he activated Stealth and shot after her. As he headed after his mother, who was rapidly pulling away from him, he could see streams of ghostly images racing toward a glowing structure that was floating directly above Mt. Kimball. It hadn’t been there this morning; he was sure of it. He also noticed some men and women stepping out of vehicles and looking up at him from various locations around his dorm but put them out of his thoughts as he chased after his mother’s ghost.
Before he could increase his speed, his mother had disappeared into the structure that had appeared on the mountain. If he was being honest, it looked like a very large bug zapper. What the hell was it? As he drew closer to the “Bug Zapper,” the sky above the mountain ripped open. It looked as if a horizontal doorway to another place with a different sky had just opened, and floating Gallon-style ships began dropping through the opening like the monsters had in the moving Ironman, slow and graceful. It wasn’t just a few ships, either. There were a lot of ships armed with hundreds of people on each of them that he could see. He’d been so caught up in going after his mom that he’d forgotten to slow down and had to dodge to the side of the “Bug Zapper.” He adjusted his flight to the east and turned to make his way back toward the mountain.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He had no idea what had happened to his mom, but if he were to read this from context, A group of beings had initiated the SYSTEM Integration so they could harvest souls somehow. His Mom was dead, probably Elizabeth too. Then his mind went into hyperdrive. Agents, there had been agents around his dorm room, which meant…Damn, his computer had a camera, and it hadn’t been secure. Could it even be secure? This meant that if the NSA actually had the ability to monitor every device in the United States, they would have picked him up, moving around the room like Spiderman and then disappearing. Could they have detected him flying? The notes from the SYSTEM said no, but he had agents on the ground around his dorm room, which indicated he could have been wrong. Again. None of that mattered if there were forces invading his world to steal humanity's souls, though. That was some next-level evil shit right there.
His mind circled back to Mom was dead.
Why didn’t he feel worse about that?
Maybe because it’s the end of the world, and a lot of people are dying right now
Just as Connor was thinking about what to do about the SYSTEM, this invasion and the Agents, a bright light was emitted from Structure at the top of the mountain. And he lost all sense of his surrounds as his mind could only perceive the notifications that were scrolling down his vision.
WARNING! You have been attacked by Stun Spell. Rank Epic
You have been Stunned
Stealth Deactivated
Flight Deactivated.
He realized that as the words filled his vision, he was falling toward the ground at approximately 100 miles per hour. 101, 102. Shit! Gravity sucked.
Connor didn’t even feel the impact when he slammed into the ground. The only way he knew he’d hit was through the new Notifications he received.
Falling, Impact Damage: 1,200
The Title “It's Not the Fall That Kills You, It's the Sudden Stop” does not apply while Stunned.
Current Hit points: 168 of 1,368
Stun Timer Epic: 6 Turns.
One minute later, Connor came to. His body had regenerated 30 Hit Points already. However, that did him absolutely no good. He was underground, halfway buried under rocks. Rocks surrounded his lower body, but his upper torso was in a relatively big open area. A mine tunnel, maybe? He was able to drag himself entirely out of the rock pile before shockwave rushed through the rock.
Reacting without thought, Connor rolled up against a wall of the small cavern and pulled the fridge, cabinet, and dresser out of his inventory around him to try to make a cavity a place where he could survive in if there was a cave him. It was a crap plan, but he had to try something so he didn’t get crushed. A moment later, the ceiling was falling all around him. He couldn’t see it in the dark, which was both lucky and terrifying. At least he wouldn’t see the stone that turned him into goo.
Now, to try to assess his situation, Connor summoned the flashlight from his backpack into his hand and switched it on. It worked! It was probably because it had been in his inventory when the EMP had gone off.
He looked around. Yes, he was in a mine shaft that had collapsed entirely around him. The ceiling beam had fallen from behind him and created a triangle he was under, which had been given a little more room from the furniture he’d pulled out. He had just enough space to sit cross-legged on the ground, but he couldn’t stand.
As the dust began to settle, he considered how lucky he was. Some wouldn’t consider him lucky, but he knew that if not for the reinforcement beam, the dresser, cabinet, and minifridge he’d taken from his room, he’d probably be pasted under a rock pile right now. The damage he’d taken from the crash had broken a lot of bones in his body. He’d been lucky to even be able to roll and get the items out of his inventory in the first place.
He sat there and allowed himself to heal while he considered his options; he hadn’t tried to create a skill today yet. It looked like that was the next thing on his “To Do” list. Hopefully, the air wouldn’t run out. His mind told him it would definitely run out, while the gamer and fiction fan in him pointed out that if his body had evolved, maybe his body was more magic than physical, or maybe he could survive on less oxygen.
Regardless, he wasn’t going to get out of this with his current ability or skills, so he sat down, closed his eyes, activated Malleable Skill, and focused his intent on acquiring a skill that would get him out of being buried alive under who knew how much granite and stone.
At least he tried to. When Notifications popped into his vision, he had another option.
***
Commander Gibson looked down on the Earth from the cockpit of the X-101, the military's response to the Space Shuttle. Unlike the shuttle, this craft did not require rockets to get into orbit. Also, unlike everything else in low orbit, the X-101 still worked, which was a stroke of luck.
A few minutes ago, the three of them in the small shuttle were in a high orbit when they received a priority one message.
“Commander. I have a priority message from NORAD: Alien Incursion underway. I say again, Alien Incursion underway. Coordinates follow,” Second Lieutenant Briggs read off the message screen.
“Did you say Alien Incursion?” Technical Sergeant Nichols asked.
“He did. Now shut it and give me a targeting solution for any of the coordinates that are within our current range,” Commander Gibson said.
“Yes, sir,” Tech Seargent Nichols said as the mirrored targeting screen on his console showed an image of the Phoenix and Tucson area. The image then zoomed in on the mountain range just north of Tucson.
“I recognize the area,” Commander Gibson said, “That’s Mt. Kimball, and that structure on top of it….Whoa!”
“What the hell was that?” Lieutenant Briggs asked.
Commander Briggs looked up from his monitor at the Earth below him. From their altitude above the planet, he could see five stars of rapidly flickering lights that were oscillating through every color of the spectrum. One of the objects had blinded their targeting computer. Commander Briggs adjusted the filters, and the image cleared.
“Looks like a star, “ Tech Seargent Briggs answered.
To Commander Gibson, the structure on top of Mt. Kimball looked like a giant bug zapper. He couldn’t see the color from this angle, but it looked like it had a flat plane at the top and bottom with four panels on the corners. In the center, there was a glowing cylinder.
“Another priority message, Sir. Take them…” Lieutenant Briggs started to say as a blue flash enveloped the planet, and everything on the planet and in low Earth orbit went dead.
“I’ve lost comms to everything in low orbit and on the planet,” Lieutenant Biggs said.
“We have our orders. Link to God’s Hammer. We’ll target Mt. Kimball first,” Commander Gibson said.
“But..” Lieutenant Briggs started to say
“We have our orders. Whatever that structure is, it can’t be good for humanity, not after whatever is attacking us decided to utilize an EMP that wiped out everything below. Remember your training. Let’s do this, people. Also, I want fire solutions on the next target that will be in range.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The new satellite they’d placed in orbit was meant to test gravity-driven, non-nuclear attacks from orbit using tungsten rods. It was just a prototype, and it wasn’t supposed to be fully operational, as they had more tests to run. Today, however, It looked like today was to be that first test.
Commander Gibson and Lieutenant Briggs knew their duty and authenticated the launch. They tracked the rod as it entered orbit and streaked toward the mountain. While en route, a dark oval appeared one mile above the mountain. From their vantage point, it was just a black flat oval floating above the mountain. They couldn’t see the floating galleon sailing ships that were dropping through the portal on the opposite side.
The tungsten rod slammed into the ground with a force of 20 tons of TNT. That explosion wouldn’t have done much. It was the equivalent of a small nuke going off without the radiation. Except for flying debris, it wouldn’t have done much to Tucson. The Structure on the mountain that it struck dead on, however, exploded with an equivalent force of 10 megatons. Energy shot in all directions, but because of the crater that the tungsten rod created, it mainly reflected up into the portal directly above where the structure had been. Directly through the portal into the invading fleet.
The hole in reality above the mountain closed, as did all the other portals around the world. The explosion had ejected enough material through the portal to level Mt. Kimball and obliterate any nearby ships. Within the portal, all the nearby ships were obliterated as well, including all the ships that had held the mages who had opened the portals around Earth.
Commander Gibson was already switching to his second target when the dark disc above it winked out of existence before they could target the second structure. Ironically Commander Gibson, the individual that the SYSTEM designated as the initiator of the attack would have earned a crap ton of XP and rivaled Connor for the right to be the highest leveled individual on Earth if he’d survived long enough to receive his rewards. Instead, Commander Gibson, Lieutenant Briggs, and Technical Sergeant Nichols had just enough time to see a flying Galleon orient its nose in their general direction before a light grew brighter and swatted them out of existence.
The few astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) who saw the explosions in higher Earth orbit weren’t worried about what was happening out in the higher orbit where Commander Gibson had been. The ISS was in a lower orbit, and whatever had taken out all the electronics on Earth also crippled the ISS. They were in the process of trying to save themselves, so they had much more pressing concerns, though some of the crew saw the flash of light reach up from the planet and destroy something in a higher orbit.
The Crew of the X-101’s last act in this life ensured that the souls of their home planet would remain free, in North America at least. While the three crew members wouldn’t benefit from their act in this life, the SYSTEM recorded the Deed, and Karmic Luck appropriate to the deed was awarded to each of them as they entered the Cycle of Reincarnation.
***
Elizabeth Henley hadn’t been at her job when the plane crashed into the food court. The electricity had gone out, and she had rushed to check on Mrs. Perkins, who worked at the other end of the mall in JC Penny. She’d known the old woman for years and knew that she had a pacemaker attached to her heart. If the power had gone out everywhere, including on battery-powered devices which she knew had happened because her cell phone didn’t work, Mrs. Perkins was going to need help.
She’d run as fast as she could but had already been too late by the time she’d arrived. One of Mrs. Perkin's fellow employees was trying to do CPR on her to no avail. Nothing worked. That’s when she heard the explosion from down the hall behind herself, jumped through the door, and went off to the side. A pressure wave had blown everyone over.
When she made it back to her feet she looked down the mall corridor, everything was on fire.
Someone called out, “Away from the fire, everyone out of the building now!”
Elizabeth made sure someone had picked up Mrs. Perkins and then followed. Tears streaming down her face as she followed.
When they made it outside, she saw the structure up on top of Mt. Kimball. Then she saw the portal open like something out of a Science fiction movie, right before something moving at incredible speed streaked out of the sky from the south and slammed into the structure, destroying it and the mountain. A moment later, another blast wave washed over her, and she was blown down the parking lot away from the building, as the whole mountain effectively disappeared in a blinding gold light.
She was bruised and scrapped, but she was alive. As she picked herself up off the ground, something flickered in the corner of her eye, like a strobe light coming on for the first time. As she concentrated on it, it opened like a tooltip on her smartphone, and text appeared.
Welcome to the SYSTEM
Individual Evaluation Underway
***
“What happened to the Mother,” Jack Oglin asked his assistant Sarah.
“One of the operatives was able to contact us before the power went out,” Sarah said. They were out in the parking garage, where there was at least a little daylight shining in.
“I know that. Now that we're outside, fill me in on what you learned.”
“It seems that Mrs. Nash had an allergic reaction to the tranquilizer they administered. “
“Seriously, no one checked her medical records before…”
“We did; it was undocumented,” Sarah said, cutting him off. Just then, each of them received the same notification Elizabeth had in Tucson.
Welcome to the SYSTEM
Individual Evaluation Underway
After verifying with everyone nearby that they had all received the same messages in their vision, Sarah asked, “What do we do now?
“You saw the reports right before the power went out.” Jack pointed out, “The other five sites have some invaders that made it onto the planet. We accept the reality that is. Then, we try to reconnect with those in charge. Finally, we make sure that whoever these invaders are, they pay for the crap that happened today.”
“And Connor Nash?” Sarah asked.
“If he’s part of it, he pays first. If not, we bring him to our side because I have a feeling we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
Just then, new notifications appeared in everyone’s vision around the World.
Before Class Selection is offered, A choice must be made.
WARNING! This Choice will not be offered again.
A Tutorial is available.
The Tutorial is not safe, but it will teach you about basic SYSTEM functions and offer opportunities to discover classes of higher rarity.
For those who take full advantage of the Tutorial, Death is a likely possibility.
Would you like to participate in the tutorial? Yes or No?”
You have one minute to decide.